Derwent Water – After The Thunder was a pivotal point in my photography. Although I had been using digital post processing for a while, it was the first digital photograph that I was truly happy with.

It was taken late on a mid September afternoon, I had been walking on Skiddaw that morning and the cloud was building fast and thunder could be heard nearby. Descending through cloud I could feel the static charge in the air, I even witnessed a mini twister scoot across the fell side. I knew we were in for a storm so descended quickly to the car and headed for shelter.

I was staying nearby at the Camping Club site at Keswick. My tent was pitched on the edge of Derwent Water, as the rain fell in sheets and rumbles of thunder could be heard and felt overhead. I sat and watched the scene unfold through an opening in the flysheet. Canoes, sail boats and walkers raced for cover. As fast as the rain came it stopped. I had never seen conditions like this before in the Lake District. The storm clouds travelled deeper into the Borrowdale valley, leaving behind a silence and dead calm. It was still hot and very humid, mist rose from the woodland. A single sailboat becalmed on the lake was being slowly rowed back to shore.

I mounted the camera on a Unilock Tripod with a ball and socket head, I zoomed in on the boat, composed, and took a few photographs, bracketing to make sure I had captured the landscape and atmosphere before me.

2 weeks later the film was scanned into my PC using a canoscan 2700. I was disappointed. The original photograph looked dull and grey, the only colour was the red sail on the boat. Technically there was nothing wrong exposure, sharpness and focus were good, the composition worked. It failed on a deeper level, it had not captured what I had felt or seen. I did not reveal the subtle colour changes the sky had gone through, the mist was lost in the grey background, the sail on the boat was too bright, it did not portray the stillness on the lake. But all the elements were still there.

I used Photoshop 4. I selected the best image from the bracketed shots I had taken (partly decided by the fact the oars are clear of the water in this photograph). The image was converted to grayscale. I created about eight layers to isolate elements within the frame, the boat, water, sky, islands, woodland, and fell side. I was then able to adjust the exposure, and contrast of each of these. I found I was able to enhance the feeling of recession and bring out the mist.

 The photograph still did not fully convey the warm browns and yellows in the sky left by the thunder. I converted the image to a quad tone and adjusted the curves of all four inks to achieve the finished picture. The final act was to add a spot of colour to the sailboat.

 Why is this image so significant?

Well, it captures the feeling and the atmosphere. It reproduces not only the scene and what I has envisaged in my minds eye, but recreates the mood, the stillness of the water the, the absence of wind seen through the boat, strange colours in the sky and humidity, with mist rising from the woodland. And it was the first digital landscape photography that I had managed to do this with.

Technical Details:
Camera:               Nikon F90x
Lens:                              Sigma 75-300APO
Film:                     Fuji Sensia 100
Other:                   Unilock trip